ReplyZen sends DMs from two different starting points:
- The DMs inbox (this section). A user messages your page directly, the AI drafts a reply, you review and send.
- Automations (automations docs). A comment matches a trigger condition, and the automation sends a follow-up DM to that user as part of its action.
Both end up in the same conversation thread. This page covers how they interact.
Where the conversation lives
There's only ever one thread per user per page. If an automation sent a DM to a user yesterday and the user replies today, the reply lands in the same inbox thread you'd see if they had messaged out of the blue. You don't have to hunt across two screens to find context.
The thread view shows the full history: the automation's opening message, any 2-step consent flow, the user's replies, every AI draft and human send that followed.
"Triggered by a comment"
If a conversation started as an automation reaction to a comment, the thread header shows a small Triggered by a comment link. Clicking it opens the original comment in the Comments inbox. Useful when you want to see what the user said publicly before they ended up in your DMs.
The link is only present when the conversation actually started from an automation. Free-text inbound DMs don't have one.
Handoff stops both AI paths
When you click I'll take it from here on a conversation, the AI inbox stops drafting and any automation that would normally send a DM in that thread is blocked. The handoff is respected across both systems.
This matters for a specific scenario: a user comments on a post, an automation is configured to send them a follow-up DM, but in the meantime the user has already DM'd you about the same thing and you've taken the conversation over manually. Without the handoff guard, the automation would send its scripted DM on top of your in-progress human conversation. With it, the automation silently skips.
If you later Reopen for AI, both paths come back online. New automation triggers can send again, and the inbox will draft normally.
Configuring automation DMs
The automation-side configuration (what the message says, single message vs 2-step consent, button links, skip-if-conversation-exists) is in the Setting up an automation doc. Nothing about that has changed; the inbox just observes the outputs.
When to use which
A short reference:
| Situation | Right tool |
|---|---|
| User comments on a post asking about returns | Automation that replies publicly and DMs return instructions |
| User comments saying "DM me the link" | Automation with a 2-step consent DM |
| User messages your page directly with a question | Inbox AI draft, reviewed and sent by a teammate |
| User replies to an automation-initiated DM and the conversation continues | Inbox AI draft, in the same thread the automation started |
| You need to walk a user through a multi-turn problem | Inbox, with handoff to manual when the AI runs out of useful answers |